


Welcomed Home (In Time)

by SecondFromTheRight



Series: Missing Karen Mentions [6]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Drabble, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 07:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13162455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondFromTheRight/pseuds/SecondFromTheRight
Summary: Frank turned his head right again, towards the passenger side of the van and where The Bulletin lay. He tapped his finger against the steering wheel over and over again before finally reaching for the paper and quickly flicking to Karen’s latest article. Folding the paper and placing it against the wheel, Frank stared at her name in print. He found himself brushing his thumb near her byline.Possible missing scene drabble - Frank thinks about Karen as he drops Micro home.





	Welcomed Home (In Time)

**Author's Note:**

> I expected this scene when watching, so figured I should include it in the Missing Scenes series.
> 
> And because it's just Frank, I've changed my typical formula for these kind of drabbles and have gone with an individual POV. I hope that's okay.

Frank watched from the van as David stood at the green, front door of his house. He turned away before he could see the family welcome the hacker received. It wasn’t something Frank was allowed anymore. Never again, not like that. Not a family home in the suburbs, wife and kids lovingly welcoming him home after an absence - picture perfect. And he didn’t want to be in an environment that resembled it, couldn’t.

He exhaled at the thought of ‘home’, still trying to figure out exactly what that meant, wondering if it was something that could change again.

Frank turned his head right again, towards the passenger side of the van and where The Bulletin lay. He tapped his finger against the steering wheel over and over again before finally reaching for the paper and quickly flicking to Karen’s latest article. Folding the paper and placing it against the wheel, Frank stared at her name in print. He found himself brushing his thumb near her byline.

By the time he faced the house again, David was long gone. Welcomed home by his family. “Sarah’s my family.” went through his mind, and Frank’s response to it. He looked back at her name, her article showing her guts to New York. Her courage, her tenacity that got her in situations that risked her. He hadn’t seen her since the hotel – since the elevator. He wondered if she would welcome him home. If she was worried about him, thinking he was dead like Sarah had thought of David, if she waiting for him like Sarah had been waiting for David. Or if she was pissed at him. David had told him that Sarah had, in the end, encouraged him to do what he felt he had to do about the contents of the disc, but it cost him his family, until now. Frank couldn’t get the way Karen had looked at him just before he left her out of his head. She’d encouraged him to leave, to go deal with shit, she'd saved him. Had it and what he'd done since cost him her for good? David could go back to his family now, but Frank was in some ways as much of a mess as he ever had been. He couldn’t just knock on Karen’s door and try to fit back into something. ‘After’ – if they were looking for an after, he had move forward from shit first.

Letting out another deep exhale of breath, he closed his eyes, nodding his head in acceptance. Opening his eyes, Frank folded the paper over, Karen’s article facing upwards, and put it back on the passenger seat before he drove away from the street. He couldn't go inside the Lieberman's home for family dinner, and he couldn't just turn up at Karen's door - not yet - but he could try to get himself to a place where one day he could maybe do both.

**Author's Note:**

> <https://secondfromtheright.tumblr.com/>


End file.
